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  1. Costs and Benefits of Diverse Plurality in Economics.Teemu Lari & Uskali Mäki - 2024 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 54 (5):412-441.
    The literature on pluralism in economics has focused on the benefits expected from the plurality of theories, methods, and frameworks. This overlooks half of the picture: the costs. Neither have the multifarious costs been systematically analyzed in philosophy of science. We begin rectifying this neglect. We discuss how the benefits of plurality and diversity in science presuppose distinct types of plurality and how various benefit and plurality types are associated with different types of costs. Finally, we ponder how the general (...)
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  • How to move beyond epistemic battles: pluralism and contextualism at the science-society interface.Canali Stefano & Lohse Simon - 2024 - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11 (1).
    The COVID-19 pandemic has been the scene of several epistemic battles at the science-society interface, creating deadlocks that have been hard to overcome. To cut through the paralysing elements of these discussions, we present an analysis of three epistemic battles, concerning empirical evidence, expertise, and model projections. Our analysis singles out a crucial factor that drives unhelpful disputes like these: the contested prioritisation of specific types of scientific knowledge, which are considered adequate for policy only if they meet predetermined standards. (...)
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  • What Exactly is Presupposed by Agnotology? The Challenge of Intentions.Mathias Girel - 2023 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 36 (3):229-246.
    The paper seeks to contribute to clarifying agnotology as an ‘epistemic strategy’, conceived as ‘epistemically damaging and hurt[ing] the production of knowledge’. My general claim is that the grammar of intentions ‘embedded’ in agnotological arguments is often not considered accurately. I use considerations from the philosophy of action as a theoretical framework to make more explicit what is implied in agnogenetic manoeuvres. Agnotology, as a ‘theory’ about epistemic states, in particular knowledge and ignorance, would be seriously incomplete without that component. (...)
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  • No-Regret Learning Supports Voters’ Competence.Petr Spelda, Vit Stritecky & John Symons - 2024 - Social Epistemology 38 (5):543-559.
    Procedural justifications of democracy emphasize inclusiveness and respect and by doing so come into conflict with instrumental justifications that depend on voters’ competence. This conflict raises questions about jury theorems and makes their standing in democratic theory contested. We show that a type of no-regret learning called meta-induction can help to satisfy the competence assumption without excluding voters or diverse opinion leaders on an a priori basis. Meta-induction assigns weights to opinion leaders based on their past predictive performance to determine (...)
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  • On masks and masking: epistemic harms and science communication.Kristen Intemann & Inmaculada de Melo-Martín - 2023 - Synthese 202 (3):1-17.
    During emerging public health crises, both policymakers and members of the public are looking to scientific experts to provide guidance. Even in cases where there are significant uncertainties, there is pressure for experts to “speak with one voice” to avoid confusion, allow officials to make evidence-based decisions rapidly, and encourage public support for such decisions. This can lead experts to engage in masking of information about the state of the science or regarding assumptions involved in policy recommendations. Although experts might (...)
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  • Climate denialism bullshit is harmful.Joshua Luczak - 2023 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1):1-20.
    This paper suggests that some climate denialism is bullshit. Those who spread it do not display a proper concern for the truth. This paper also shows that this bullshit is harmful in some significant ways. It undermines the epistemic demands imposed on us by what we care about, by the social roles we occupy, and by morality. It is also harmful because it corrodes epistemic trust.
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  • On the Harms of Agnotological Practices and How to Address Them.Inmaculada de Melo-Martín - 2023 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 36 (3):211-228.
    Although science is our most reliable producer of knowledge, it can also be used to create ignorance, unjustified doubt, and misinformation. In doing so, agnotological practices result not only in epistemic harms but also in social ones. A way to prevent or minimise such harms is to impede these ignorance-producing practices. In this paper, I explore various challenges to such a proposal. I first argue that reliably identifying agnotological practices in a way that permits the prevention of relevant harms is (...)
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  • Looking beyond values: The legitimacy of social perspectives, opinions and interests in science.Hannah Hilligardt - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (4):1-20.
    This paper critically assesses the current debates in philosophy of science that focus on the concept of values. In these debates, it is often assumed that all relevant non-epistemic influences on scientific research can be described as values and, consequently, that science carries social legitimacy if the correct values play their proper role in research. I argue that values are _not_ the only relevant non-epistemic influences on research: not unless our definition of values is so broad that it becomes unmanageable. (...)
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  • (1 other version)When do non-epistemic values play an epistemically illegitimate role in science? How to solve one half of the new demarcation problem.Alexander Reutlinger - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 92 (C):152-161.
    Solving the “new demarcation problem” requires a distinction between epistemically legitimate and illegitimate roles for non-epistemic values in science. This paper addresses one ‘half’ (i.e. a sub-problem) of the new demarcation problem articulated by the Gretchenfrage: What makes the role of a non-epistemic value in science epistemically illegitimate? I will argue for the Explaining Epistemic Errors (EEE) account, according to which the epistemically illegitimate role of a non-epistemic value is defined via an explanatory claim: the fact that an epistemic agent (...)
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  • Demarcation without Dogmas.Ilmari Hirvonen & Janne Karisto - 2022 - Theoria 88 (3):701-720.
    This paper reviews how research on the demarcation problem has developed, starting from Popper’s criterion of falsifiability and ending with recent naturalistically oriented approaches. The main differences between traditional and contemporary approaches to the problem are explicated in terms of six postulates called the traditional assumptions. It is argued that all of the assumptions can be dismissed without giving up on the demarcation problem and that doing so might benefit further discussions on pseudoscience. Four present-day research movements on evaluating the (...)
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  • The new demarcation problem.Bennett Holman & Torsten Wilholt - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C):211-220.
    There is now a general consensus amongst philosophers in the values in science literature that values necessarily play a role in core areas of scientific inquiry. We argue that attention should now be turned from debating the value-free ideal to delineating legitimate from illegitimate influences of values in science, a project we dub “The New Demarcation Problem.” First, we review past attempts to demarcate the uses of values and propose a categorization of the strategies by where they seek to draw (...)
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  • Scientific Pluralism.Ludwig David & Ruphy Stéphanie - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Disagreement in science: introduction to the special issue.Finnur Dellsén & Maria Baghramian - 2020 - Synthese 198 (S25):6011-6021.
    Introduction to the Synthese Special Issue on Disagreement in Science.
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  • How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty.Jon Leefmann - 2021 - Frontiers In 6 (Article 599909):1-13.
    Although the impact of so-called “sponsorship bias” has been the subject of increased attention in the philosophy of science, what exactly constitutes its epistemic wrongness is still debated. In this paper, I will argue that neither evidential accounts nor social–epistemological accounts can fully account for the epistemic wrongness of sponsorship bias, but there are good reasons to prefer social–epistemological to evidential accounts. I will defend this claim by examining how both accounts deal with a paradigm case from medical epistemology, recently (...)
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  • Weighing the costs: the epistemic dilemma of no-platforming.Uwe Peters & Nikolaj Nottelmann - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):7231-7253.
    ‘No-platforming’—the practice of denying someone the opportunity to express their opinion at certain venues because of the perceived abhorrent or misguided nature of their view—is a hot topic. Several philosophers have advanced epistemic reasons for using the policy in certain cases. Here we introduce epistemic considerations against no-platforming that are relevant for the reflection on the cases at issue. We then contend that three recent epistemic arguments in favor of no-platforming fail to factor these considerations in and, as a result, (...)
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  • When Is Scientific Dissent Epistemically Inappropriate?Boaz Miller - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (5):918-928.
    Normatively inappropriate scientific dissent prevents warranted closure of scientific controversies and confuses the public about the state of policy-relevant science, such as anthropogenic climate change. Against recent criticism by de Melo-Martín and Intemann of the viability of any conception of normatively inappropriate dissent, I identify three conditions for normatively inappropriate dissent: its generation process is politically illegitimate, it imposes an unjust distribution of inductive risks, and it adopts evidential thresholds outside an accepted range. I supplement these conditions with an inference-to-the-best-explanation (...)
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  • Feyerabend and manufactured disagreement: reflections on expertise, consensus, and science policy.Jamie Shaw - 2020 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 25):6053-6084.
    Feyerabend is infamous for his defense of pluralism, which he extends to every topic he discusses. Disagreement, a by-product of this pluralism, becomes a sign of flourishing critical communities. In Feyerabend’s political works, he extends this pluralism from science to democratic societies and incorporates his earlier work on scientific methodology into a procedure for designing just policy. However, a description and analysis of Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement is lacking. In this paper, I reconstruct and assess Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement, with (...)
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  • Disagreement or denialism? “Invasive species denialism” and ethical disagreement in science.David M. Frank - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 25):6085-6113.
    Recently, invasion biologists have argued that some of the skepticism expressed in the scientific and lay literatures about the risks of invasive species and other aspects of the consensus within invasion biology is a kind of science denialism. This paper presents an argument that, while some claims made by skeptics of invasion biology share important features with paradigm cases of science denialism, others express legitimate ethical concerns that, even if one disagrees, should not be dismissed as denialist. Further, this case (...)
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  • The Social Epistemology of Consensus and Dissent.Boaz Miller - 2019 - In Miranda Fricker, Peter Graham, David Henderson & Nikolaj Jang Pedersen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 228-237.
    This paper reviews current debates in social epistemology about the relations ‎between ‎knowledge ‎and consensus. These relations are philosophically interesting on their ‎own, but ‎also have ‎practical consequences, as consensus takes an increasingly significant ‎role in ‎informing public ‎decision making. The paper addresses the following questions. ‎When is a ‎consensus attributable to an epistemic community? Under what conditions may ‎we ‎legitimately infer that a consensual view is knowledge-based or otherwise ‎epistemically ‎justified? Should consensus be the aim of scientific inquiry, and (...)
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  • Roles for Socially Engaged Philosophy of Science in Environmental Policy.Kevin C. Elliott - 2018 - In David Boonin (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 767-778.
    In recent years, philosophers of science have taken renewed interest in pursuing scholarship that is “socially engaged.” As a result, this scholarship has become increasingly relevant to public policy. In order to illustrate the ways in which the philosophy of science can inform public policy, this chapter focuses specifically on environmental research and policy. It shows how philosophy can assist with environmental policy making in three ways: clarifying the roles of values in policy-relevant science; addressing scientific dissent, especially in response (...)
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  • A Framework for Understanding Wishful Thinking.Daniel Hicks & Kevin Elliott - manuscript
    While the science and values literature has seen recurrent concerns about wishful thinking, there have been few efforts to characterize this phenomenon. Based on a review of varieties of wishful thinking involved in climate skepticism, we argue that instances of wishful thinking can be fruitfully characterized in terms of the mechanisms that generate them and the problems associated with them. We highlight the array of mechanisms associated with wishful thinking, as well as the fact that it can be evaluated both (...)
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  • Epistemic trust and the ethics of science communication: against transparency, openness, sincerity and honesty.Stephen John - 2018 - Social Epistemology 32 (2):75-87.
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  • (1 other version)Ontological Choices and the Value-Free Ideal.David Ludwig - 2015 - Erkenntnis (6):1-20.
    The aim of this article is to argue that ontological choices in scientific practice undermine common formulations of the value-free ideal in science. First, I argue that the truth values of scientific statements depend on ontological choices. For example, statements about entities such as species, race, memory, intelligence, depression, or obesity are true or false relative to the choice of a biological, psychological, or medical ontology. Second, I show that ontological choices often depend on non-epistemic values. On the basis of (...)
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  • Epistemic interests and the objectivity of inquiry.Torsten Wilholt - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C):86-93.
    This paper advocates for making epistemic interests a central object of philosophical analysis in epistemology and philosophy of science. It is argued that the importance of epistemic interests derives from their fundamental importance for the notion of objectivity. Epistemic interests are defined as individuated by a set of objectives, each of which represents a dimension of the search for truth. Among these dimensions, specificity, sensitivity, and productivity are discussed in detail. It is argued that the relevance of productivity is often (...)
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  • Genuine versus bogus scientific controversies: the case of statins.Carlo Martini & Mattia Andreoletti - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (4):1-23.
    Science progresses through debate and disagreement, and scientific controversies play a crucial role in the growth of scientific knowledge. However, not all controversies and disagreements are progressive in science. Sometimes, controversies can be pseudoscientific; in fact, bogus controversies, and what seem like genuine scientific disagreements, can be a distortion of science set up by non-scientific actors. Bogus controversies are detrimental to science because they can hinder scientific progress and eventually bias science-based decisions. The first goal of this paper is to (...)
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  • How Dissent on Gender Bias in Academia Affects Science and Society: Learning from the Case of Climate Change Denial.Manuela Fernández Pinto & Anna Leuschner - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (4):573-593.
    Gender bias is a recalcitrant problem in academia and society. However, dissent has been created on this issue. We focus on dissenting studies by Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, arguing that they reach conclusions that are unwarranted on the basis of the available evidence and that they ignore fundamental objections to their methodological decisions. Drawing on discussions from other contexts, particularly on manufactured dissent concerning anthropogenic climate change, we conclude that dissent on gender bias substantially contributes to the (...)
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  • The limits of conventional justification: inductive risk and industry bias beyond conventionalism.Miguel Ohnesorge - 2020 - Frontiers in Research Metric and Analytics 14.
    This article develops a constructive criticism of methodological conventionalism. Methodological conventionalism asserts that standards of inductive risk ought to be justified in virtue of their ability to facilitate coordination in a research community. On that view, industry bias occurs when conventional methodological standards are violated to foster industry preferences. The underlying account of scientific conventionality, however, is problematically incomplete. Conventions may be justified in virtue of their coordinative functions, but often qualify for posterior empirical criticism as research advances. Accordingly, industry (...)
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  • The promise and perils of industry‐funded science.Bennett Holman & Kevin C. Elliott - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (11).
    Private companies provide by far the most funding for scientific research and development. Nevertheless, relatively little attention has been paid to the dynamics of industry‐funded research by philosophers of science. This paper addresses this gap by providing an overview of the major strengths and weaknesses of industry research funding, together with the existing recommendations for addressing the weaknesses. It is designed to provide a starting point for future philosophical work that explores the features of industry‐funded research, avenues for addressing concerns, (...)
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  • (1 other version)Ontological Choices and the Value-Free Ideal.David Ludwig - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (6):1253-1272.
    The aim of this article is to argue that ontological choices in scientific practice undermine common formulations of the value-free ideal in science. First, I argue that the truth values of scientific statements depend on ontological choices. For example, statements about entities such as species, race, memory, intelligence, depression, or obesity are true or false relative to the choice of a biological, psychological, or medical ontology. Second, I show that ontological choices often depend on non-epistemic values. On the basis of (...)
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  • Harmful Research and the Paradox of Credibility.Torsten Wilholt - 2023 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 36 (3):193-209.
    This paper discusses how to deal with research that threatens to cause harm to society—in particular, whether and in what cases bans and moratoria are appropriate. First, it asks what normative resources philosophy of science may draw on to answer such questions. In an effort to presuppose only resources acknowledgeable across different comprehensive worldviews, it is claimed that the aim of credibility provides a good basis for normative reflection. A close analysis reveals an inner tension inherent in the pursuit of (...)
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  • The Pragmatics of Ignorance.Mathias Girel - 2015 - In Matthias Gross & Linsey McGoey (eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies. Routledge. pp. 61-74.
    The goal of this chapter is to contribute to ignorance studies by taking advantage of the pragmatist epistemology of Peirce and Dewey, which, in my view, would be an “unfinished” business without facing sundry problems raised by ignorance studies. Five typical pragmatist claims provide the framework for this chapter. They can be endorsed by other philosophies, but their conjunction is typical of pragmatism: (1) the first is Peirce’s pragmatist maxim for clarifying our ideas, where the reference to “practical bearings”, to (...)
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  • Exploring the limits of dissent: the case of shooting bias.Manuela Fernandez Pinto & Anna Leuschner - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-19.
    The shooting bias hypothesis aims to explain the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police. We present the evidence mounting in support of the existence of shooting bias and then focus on two dissenting studies. We examine these studies in light of Biddle and Leuschner’s “inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent” and conclude that, although they meet this account only partially, the studies are in fact epistemically and socially detrimental as they contribute to racism in society and to a (...)
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  • Inductive risk: does it really refute value-freedom?Markus Dressel - 2022 - Theoria 37 (2):181-207.
    The argument from inductive risk is considered to be one of the strongest challenges for value-free science. A great part of its appeal lies in the idea that even an ideal epistemic agent—the “perfect scientist” or “scientist qua scientist”—cannot escape inductive risk. In this paper, I scrutinize this ambition by stipulating an idealized Bayesian decision setting. I argue that inductive risk does not show that the “perfect scientist” must, descriptively speaking, make non-epistemic value-judgements, at least not in a way that (...)
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  • The Independence of Research—A Review of Disciplinary Perspectives and Outline of Interdisciplinary Prospects.Jochen Gläser, Mitchell Ash, Guido Buenstorf, David Hopf, Lara Hubenschmid, Melike Janßen, Grit Laudel, Uwe Schimank, Marlene Stoll, Torsten Wilholt, Lothar Zechlin & Klaus Lieb - 2022 - Minerva 60 (1):105-138.
    The independence of research is a key strategic issue of modern societies. Dealing with it appropriately poses legal, economic, political, social and cultural problems for society, which have been studied by the corresponding disciplines and are increasingly the subject of reflexive discourses of scientific communities. Unfortunately, problems of independence are usually framed in disciplinary contexts without due consideration of other perspectives’ relevance or possible contributions. To overcome these limitations, we review disciplinary perspectives and findings on the independence of research and (...)
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  • Platonic Conversations, by Mary Margaret McCabe: New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. xi + 402, £50. [REVIEW]Stephanie Gibbons - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2):405-408.
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  • The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism.Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook & Elisabeth Lloyd - 2018 - Synthese 195 (1):175-196.
    Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting (...)
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  • Extra-academic transdisciplinarity and scientific pluralism: what might they learn from one another?Inkeri Koskinen & Uskali Mäki - 2016 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (3):419-444.
    The paper looks at challenges related to the ideas of integration and knowledge systems in extra-academic transdisciplinarity. Philosophers of science are only starting to pay attention to the increasingly common practice of introducing extra-academic perspectives or engaging extra-academic parties in academic knowledge production. So far the rather scant philosophical discussion on the subject has mainly concentrated on the question whether such engagement is beneficial in science or not. Meanwhile, there is quite a large and growing literature on extra-academic TD, mostly (...)
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  • What is epistemically wrong with research affected by sponsorship bias? The evidential account.Alexander Reutlinger - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (2):1-26.
    Biased research occurs frequently in the sciences. In this paper, I will focus on one particular kind of biased research: research that is subject to sponsorship bias. I will address the following epistemological question: what precisely is epistemically wrong with biased research of this kind? I will defend the evidential account of epistemic wrongness: that is, research affected by sponsorship bias is epistemically wrong if and only if the researchers in question make false claims about the evidential support of some (...)
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  • On Epistemically Detrimental Dissent: Contingent Enabling Factors versus Stable Difference-Makers.Soazig Le Bihan & Iheanyi Amadi - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 84 (5):1020-1030.
    The aim of this article is to critically build on Justin Biddle and Anna Leuschner’s characterization of epistemologically detrimental dissent in the context of science. We argue that the presence of nonepistemic agendas and severe nonepistemic consequences offers neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for EDD to obtain. We clarify their role by arguing that they are contingent enabling factors, not stable difference-makers, in the production of EDD. We maintain that two stable difference-makers are core to the production of EDD: production (...)
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  • Is it appropriate to ‘target’ inappropriate dissent? on the normative consequences of climate skepticism.Anna Leuschner - 2018 - Synthese 195 (3):1255-1271.
    As Justin Biddle and I have argued, climate skepticism can be epistemically problematic when it displays a systematic intolerance of producer risks at the expense of public risks : 261–278, 2015). In this paper, I will provide currently available empirical evidence that supports our account, and I discuss the normative consequences of climate skepticism by drawing upon Philip Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of inquiry.” Finally, I argue that even though concerns regarding inappropriate disqualification of dissent are reasonable, a (...)
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  • Inductive risk and epistemically detrimental dissent in policy-relevant science.Tyler Paetkau - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (1):1-20.
    While dissent is key to successful science, it is not always beneficial. By requiring scientists to respond to objections, epistemically detrimental dissent (EDD) consumes resources that could be better devoted to furthering scientific discovery. Moreover, bad-faith dissent can create a chilling effect on certain lines of inquiry and make settled controversies seem open to debate. Such dissent results in harm to scientific progress and the public policy that depends on this science. Biddle and Leuschner propose four criteria that draw on (...)
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  • Social and cognitive diversity in science: introduction.Samuli Reijula, Jaakko Kuorikoski, Inkeri Koskinen & Kristina Rolin - 2023 - Synthese 202 (2):1-10.
    In this introduction to the Topical Collection on Social and Cognitive Diversity in Science, we map the questions that have guided social epistemological approaches to diversity in science. Both social and cognitive diversity of different types is claimed to be epistemically beneficial. The challenge is to understand how an increase in a group’s diversity can bring about epistemic benefits and whether there are limits beyond which diversity can no longer improve a group’s epistemic performance. The contributions to the Topical Collection (...)
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  • Fake Research: How Can We Recognise it and Respond to it?Martin Carrier - 2023 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 36 (3):247-264.
    Fake research produces results that are invalid from the start. I take such research to be characterised by three jointly sufficient features. It is severely methodologically defective, and the relevant defects support certain nonepistemic (social, political, economic) interests and objectives, while the relevant objectives typically concern the interference with attempts at political regulation. I deal with two kinds of claimed fake research. One is agnotological ploys in which scientific dissent is created by interested parties from industry or politics in order (...)
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  • In Defense of “Targeting” Some Dissent about Science.Erin J. Nash - 2018 - Perspectives on Science 26 (3):325-359.
    That we have recently transitioned into a post-truth political era is a common refrain. But the influence of false, inaccurate, and misleading claims on politics in western liberal democracies isn't novel. In their book, Merchants of Doubt, Oreskes and Conway expose the "Tobacco Strategy": the methods various actors have deployed, increasingly since the mid-twentieth century, to obscure the truth about scientific issues from the public, induce widespread ignorance and unwarranted doubt, and stall public responses to issues that can have significant (...)
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  • (1 other version)A Different Kind of Rigor: What Climate Scientists Can Learn from Emergency Room Doctors.Kent A. Peacock - 2018 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 21 (2):194-214.
    ABSTRACTJames Hansen and others have argued that climate scientists are often reluctant to speak out about extreme outcomes of anthropogenic carbonization. According to Hansen, such reticence lessens the chance of effective responses to these threats. With the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a case study, reasons for scientific reticence are reviewed. The challenges faced by scientists in finding the right balance between reticence and speaking out are both ethical and methodological. Scientists need a framework within which to (...)
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  • (1 other version)A Different Kind of Rigor: What Climate Scientists Can Learn From Emergency Room Doctors.Kent A. Peacock - forthcoming - Ethics, Policy, and Environment.
    James Hansen and others have argued that climate scientists are often reluctant to speak out about extreme outcomes of anthropogenic carbonization. According to Hansen, such reticence lessens the chance of effective responses to these threats. With the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a case study, reasons for scientific reticence are reviewed. The challenges faced by scientists in finding the right balance between reticence and speaking out are both ethical and methodological. Scientists need a framework within which to (...)
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  • Exploring the limits of dissent: the case of shooting bias.Anna Leuschner & Manuela Fernández Pinto - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-19.
    The shooting bias hypothesis aims to explain the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police. We present the evidence mounting in support of the existence of shooting bias and then focus on two dissenting studies. We examine these studies in light of Biddle and Leuschner’s “inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent” and conclude that, although they meet this account only partially, the studies are in fact epistemically and socially detrimental as they contribute to racism in society and to a (...)
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  • Does It Matter if the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming Is 97% or 99.99%?Dana Nuccitelli, Peter Jacobs, Sarah A. Green, Ken Rice, Bärbel Winkler, Mark Richardson, John Cook & Andrew G. Skuce - 2016 - Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 36 (3):150-156.
    Cook et al. reported a 97% scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), based on a study of 11,944 abstracts in peer-reviewed science journals. Powell claims that the Cook et al. methodology was flawed and that the true consensus is virtually unanimous at 99.99%. Powell’s method underestimates the level of disagreement because it relies on finding explicit rejection statements as well as the assumption that abstracts without a stated position endorse the consensus. Cook et al.’s survey of the papers’ authors (...)
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  • Inmaculada de Melo-Martín and Kristen Intemann: The Fight Against Doubt—How to Bridge the Gap Between Scientists and the Public: Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018, 232 pp, £25.99, ISBN: 9780190869229. [REVIEW]Tobias Schönwitz, David Hopf & Daria Jadreškić - 2020 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 51 (1):203-206.
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  • “That’s Unhelpful, Harmful and Offensive!” Epistemic and Ethical Concerns with Meta-argument Allegations.Hugh Breakey - 2020 - Argumentation 35 (3):389-408.
    “Meta-argument allegations” consist of protestations that an interlocutor’s speech is wrongfully offensive or will trigger undesirable social consequences. Such protestations are meta-argument in the sense that they do not interrogate the soundness of an opponent’s argumentation, but instead focus on external features of that argument. They are allegations because they imply moral wrongdoing. There is a legitimate place for meta-argument allegations, and the moral and epistemic goods that can come from them will be front of mind for those levelling such (...)
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